


I wonder if he knows.

by lovi



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Admiration, M/M, Mutual Pining, but very much mutual love and respect....., kitanoya, really not terribly romantic to be honest like no smoochy smoochy, trying something out here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:07:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovi/pseuds/lovi
Summary: what does it feel like to see yourself filtered through a lens the shade of your complimentary color?
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Nishinoya Yuu
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	I wonder if he knows.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a big fan of how these two characters each seem to naturally embody the characteristic the other strives to have idk....... also just wanted to finally drop something under this tag, LMAO kitanoya spread the word!!!!! hope yall enjoy this one!! thank you twitter for reading this first lol!!

_I wonder if he knows._

Hawk-like eyes bore into Kita from behind the net, watching as he strode onto the court, a once quiet inconspicuousness pressure cooking into some incomprehensible force. _Not unbreakable_ , Nishinoya thought as he dove roughly to the left, _but immovable_. Where flame and fire sat high on the tongue at the front of the court, a tuft of grey was always flowing intuitively across the back burners; leaking in through each crack in the team and filling it with some expansive foam, soft yet firm.

Nishinoya watched him waste no time, watched as each word was woven intentional from the tongue; each gaze meaningful, nearly prose-like as he seemed to grab the reins of time and tame it like some great beast. He knew the finite—he _understood_ the finite from the second the heel of his shoe brushed the court, viewing the game as a moment with an end; like the book of day, whose faded back cover lay gilded, blessed by the finality of the setting sun.

He passed, he received with nothing more than average capability but it was something within those eyes—woody browns laced with chestnut waters—that burned through time like a firepoker: grabbing the moment by its shoulders and holding it accountable with a graceful elegance Nishinoya would never master. He wanted to reach out and touch him, he wanted to make sure he was real, almost fearful of the gravitational pull he felt tugging him closer, closer even til the whistle was blown and Nishinoya was awake and his fingers were deftly laced in the netting, grimy and unclean.

Fox-like eyes pierced through the crowd of sweat and bodies until they fell on his own, singing their surface, peeling back a layer of sunburnt skin to expose raw flesh: Nishinoya felt _opened_ ; opened as in tilled and sowed, as in flooded and drained. And it wasn’t until they stood face-to-face—until Kita reached his hand out beneath the net and shook his hand, firm and grounded and whole—that Nishinoya realized what it was:

_There is not a shred of fear in this man’s body_ : This man held each second in calloused palms and kissed it fondly with chapped lips til its paint chipped and the metal rusted.

_I wonder if he knows._

\- - -

_I wonder if he knows._

Kita’s eyes lit up his senses with a full palette of paint, soaking up the euphoria of movement that swam through the waters of time like some great fish, scales resplendent and multi-colored. It was the height of the game and everything was set to crumble, everything was set to fall apart but this man _just could not let it go, huh?_ Nishinoya dove to his left and barely kept the ball from touching the ground, setting off something close to a firecracker within Kita’s chest.

There must have been something incomprehensible flowing through his veins, something pumping in his pulse that made his movement _different_ , something eerily reminiscent of some prickled static scattered across the arms, making the hair stand up straight. If Kita had disliked it he would just ignore it, would just gather up all his focus, bunching it up in folded palms and distributing it across his team like pollen scattered over the dashboard.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off him, the way his lithe body moved like plasma across a field of blank cardstock, the way he transformed life into something to be consumed, breathed in and drank with each light thud in the throat, each step laced with reliable buoyancy across skid-stained hardwood. Nishinoya was some small, strange manifestation of the sharp and loud, a tropical storm that darkened the sky in its richness just to bring out the green of the vegetation around it: an air not hanging above the earth, but pervading its every crevice, painting each hue just a little brighter with each action, each movement concrete and real as the earth beneath his feet.

Kita’s eyes sat like small balls of molten metal burning straight through to the back of his skull, throbbing in his temples: Nishinoya’s eyes opened wider, his pupils expanded as he drank it all in—the sweet nectar of movement, the self-love of present-oriented action and shotgun decision-making. A thick-peeled orange sat firm in the palm: the orange would be hungrily unwrapped, the peel cast aside, teeth sunken into juicy flesh and devoured until the seeds were spat out. Nishinoya’s fingernails scrambled at the flesh til there was no border: the bumpiness of the peel still tangible under calloused fingerprints: Couldn’t he feel the flow of his own waters—couldn’t he see the smooth ripple throughout his team the second things began to crumble? _As long as he’s there, they can’t crumble_ : the keystone shoved sharp and sure into the center of the instability, the crucial connection that kept time flowing like cold water, purified from the mountaintop.

Nishinoya was no puppeteer; he desired no control and hungered for no power. He stood directly on the other side of the net, small and undeniably _human_ as he vigorously shook his hand; his gaze piercing into him a sharp contrast from the warm pervasiveness of the gaze he lay over his side of the court, manifested through stretch of limb and scrape of skin:

_I wonder if he knows._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for taking the time to read and humor me :,,) I like to think they'd have some kind of mutual understanding I'd love to hear them talk about life..... I just love them. AND I LOVE YOU!!!!! <3 hope you have a lovely day or night, spring or fall. sending love your way if you need it <3


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